Tag Archives | oil

Tobacco Investments Update

Apparently, CalPERS sent invitations out on 9/27, 10/6 and 10/13 to about 400 people. Although I am on mailing lists for press and rulemaking, I wasn’t on the “stakeholders” mailing list. That has now been corrected going forward.

Norway’s Resource Extraction

The Government Pension Fund Global (Norges, the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund), is one of the world’s largest funds initially funded by resource extraction. Learn about its history, objective and management in the video clip below. The fund is saving for the future generations in Norway; where is the American equivalent?

To achieve broad exposure to global economic growth, Norges invests widely in most markets, countries and currencies outside Norway. The largest geographic exposures are to Europe and North America, followed by developed markets in Asia and Oceania and emerging markets. At the end of 2014, the fund’s holdings related to 75 countries and 47 currencies. Continue Reading →

Disclose Climate Lobbying: Resolutions Filed at Oil and Gas Companies

Encouraged by the forward‐looking actions addressing climate change at the Paris Climate Conference (COP21) in December, investors have filed shareholder resolutions at 11 oil and gas companies asking them to disclose climate lobbying activities. The resolutions urge the companies to fully disclose their lobbying activities and expenses (direct and indirect through trade associations) and to review their public policy advocacy on energy policy and climate change. Let’s get oil and gas companies to disclose climate lobbying! I sincerely hope readers of Corporate Governance (CorpGov.net) will vote in favor of these resolutions as they appear on corporate proxies. Monitor how others are voting at Proxy Democracy. If you own stock in other oil and gas companies, consider filing similar resolutions. Don’t know how? Check out our Shareowner Action Handbook. Take Action!Continue Reading →

Bay Area workers and unions are increasingly joining the climate justice movement, but their pension funds have been quietly investing in the oil and natural gas boom.

Deep in the heart of Texas, the oil industry is still going strong. Take Navitas Midstream, a private corporation that specializes in transporting fossil fuels. Navitas is currently laying a pipeline that, when completed later this year, will funnel natural gas fracked from the Eagle Ford Shale into a processing plant that’s also under construction. Called the “La Bahia System,” the pipeline and plant will handle 120 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. La Bahia is part of a labyrinth of fossil fuel infrastructure that’s growing and will generate billions in profits for its owners — even with the current slump in oil prices. But it also is fueling the fracking boom and climate change. Continue Reading →

The Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF) recently welcomed the decision by Royal Dutch Shell’s Board of Directors to recommend support for the ‘Aiming for A’ shareholder resolution submitted by a coalition of shareholders including the Forum, CCLA, Rathbone Greenbank Investments and the Church Investors Group.

About a month ago, I posted a piece aimed at getting students and alumni at Harvard (and hopefully at other universities) to advocate for more democratic endowments. In my zeal to focus on endowment governance, I was far too dismissive of the movement at Harvard and hundreds of universities to divest of fossil fuels. While I still think endowment governance is central, after further examining the issue, I have come to believe divestment of fossil fuel companies is likely to be a very important part of a larger movement to ensure a salubrious planet and one which should also be compatible with more democratically governed endowments.

Perhaps explaining the evolution of my thoughts will help others have a similar conversion.